The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham

• Title:  The Chrysalids
• Author:  John Wyndham
• Borrowed from MLK Library
• Started: 5/25/09
• Finished: 5/27/09

 
And thus ends my reading of the John Wyndham Omnibus.  I loved all three novels, but The Chrysalids was by far the one that held my attention strongest.  The ending wasn't great, but also not a total surprise, as none of the other two novels ended on a very down-note.  So to have it end so happily for the main characters (albeit at the loss of almost everyone else in the book) wasn't a total surprise.  For all his apocalyptic writing, the guy was clearly an optimist.
 
The first two books (Triffids & Kraken) were about the coming of the apocalypse, but Chrysalids is different as it is years (thousands?) after the apocalypse.  This fact alone makes the drama so very different in Chrysalids as compared to the earlier two novels.  No longer is the protagonist trying to forestall the doomsday scenario, or even just barely survive it.  Instead we have a world rebuilding after some cataclysmic event. 
 
I won't bother summarizing the plot, numerous sites do that better than I could.  I'm just surprised at how much I enjoyed each of these novels.  I thought Triffids would be a somewhat silly book, instead it lead to the discovery of three fantastic works.  Hell you can even read it online if you can stand e-texts.